Dropbox Booms on First Day of Trading

Dropbox is booming on its first day trading on Wall Street, with its shares soaring over 40%.

At the market’s opening on Friday, the online storage and work collaboration software company’s shares were trading at $29. That’s a nearly 40% jump from the $21 share price Dropbox set Thursday evening.

Dropbox’s IPO is one of the technology industry’s most high-profile public market debuts since video messaging company Snap (SNAP) went public last year. Dropbox had a private valuation of $10 billion, making it a member of so-called unicorn startups with private valuations of over $1 billion.

The company recorded $1.1 billion in sales for its fiscal 2017, which was a 31% bump from the $844.8 million it brought in 2016, according to its public filings.

Like other tech companies that have gone public in recent years, Dropbox is not profitable, but it’s losing less money each year. In 2017, Dropbox lost $111.7 million, which was 47% less than the $305.0 million it lost the previous year.

Silicon Valley investor Sam Altman, the president of venture capital firm Y Combinator, congratulated Dropbox on Twitter and shared a picture of the checks investor Jessica Livingston wrote to Dropbox CEO Drew Houston in 2007, when the company was founded.

Aaron Levie, the CEO of rival online storage company Box (BOX), also congratulated Houston and Dropbox on Twitter, and said “Welcome to the neighborhood!” Technology analysts typically compare the two companies against each other considering they offer similar services, like online cloud storage for companies.

Investors appear to be more optimistic with Dropbox on Friday, with its shares still hovering around $29 in midday trading.

Box’s shares, on the other hand, were down nearly 6% to $21.49 in midday trading on Friday.

Update: Friday, 3:20 PM PST

Dropbox finished its first day of trading with its shares trading at $28.48, up a little over 35%. The company now has a market valuation of $12.45 billion, higher than its private valuation of $10 billion.

Google (GOOG) CEO Sundar Pichai also took to Twitter to congratulate Houston on his company’s IPO. Dropbox identified Google, along with other companies like Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, as one of its several competitors in the cloud storage and work software space.